[maccard]

> The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers.

I don't think that assumption has been validated, and I don't see that from this article. The premise of this article isn't that the steam deck is taking market share, it's that it's increasing compatibility of games on linux. More to the point, the steamdeck hasn't made a dent in the desktop market, see [0] it's a fraction of a percentage of _gamers_ never mind any other use cases.

Don't read this as me saying this isn't progress, but we're still a far cry (pun intended) from a dent.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

[ajvs]

Linux is now more popular than OSX according to those statistics. That's a decent milestone, and it's only going to grow as enshittification forces further downgrades in user experience, freedom and privacy in commercial OSes.

[maccard]

> Linux is now more popular than OSX according to those statistics.

Linux is more popular than OSX _on steam_ according to those statistics.

> it's only going to grow as enshittification forces further downgrades in user experience, freedom and privacy in commercial OSes.

I think you're wrong here. Take a look at the wayback machine [0] for a history of this data. There was absolutely 0 growth in linux use over the past decade until last year. The thing that changed wasn't enshittifaction, it was a piece of hardware that provided a good user experience. It's nothing to do with windows/mac getting worse or less privacy focused, it's valve providing a smooth usable product that _happens_ to run linux. I'm curious if Proton's success causes a decrease in windows users and an increase in other distros, but right now that's not what we're seeing.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://store.st...